


Enjoy Your Ruin

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dumbledore Bashing, Gen, Harry-raised-by-???, Letter, Manipulative Dumbledore, Minor Character Death, Reincarnation, first-person narration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Honestly, one can't even have a carefree reincarnation around here... and Albus did WHAT to an innocent child?</p><p>/Shameless fix-ficcing and Dumbledore-bashing./</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **A note:** I initially put down "Number Twelve Privet Drive" due to spending far too much HP-fanfic time thinking of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place and far too little of Number Four Privet Drive. Hopefully I caught all the mentions of said address. -///-
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I am not J.K. Rowling, and I do not own the Harry Potter series or any related characters. This fanfiction is purely for entertainment and not in any way for profit.

_On July 30, 1997, the house located at Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, exploded. Officially, this incident has been explained as a tragic accident involving the gas main._

_There are no known survivors. Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, believes the Boy-Who-Lived (then secretly in residence at said address under the guardianship of his relatives) to have survived, but refuses to explain his reason for this belief. By all accounts, he is more shaken by this catastrophe, and the subsequent death/disappearance of Harry Potter, than any event in recent memory._

_The involvement of Dark wizards is suspected._

_The Auror investigation is still ongoing..._


	2. The Letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I drive anyone crazy wondering, the narrator isn't anyone in the books - in her present incarnation. Feel free to guess her original identity while you're reading. ;)
> 
>  **For the benefit of readers:** In Dante's  Inferno, Cocytus is the lowest of all hells. It is exclusively reserved for traitors.

Well, you've really done it this time, Albus.

What? Did you expect a "Dear Headmaster Dumbledore"? You're not worthy.

Now, I'll admit, I wanted nothing more than a nice retirement. Forcing your own reincarnation is quite a bother, and I'd had quite enough of all this balderdash with the Statute of Secrecy, Muggles, and Lords. My only concern was memorizing Defense backwards and forwards (yes, the paranoia never quite wore off) and then assuming the identity of the most excruciatingly normal witch I could make myself out to be. I even went into Hufflepuff, for Godric's sake. (Lovely House, actually. Kept me free of the inane Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry, and after you, I never wanted to deal with pretentious, puffed-up scholars again.)

I thought for decades that I'd pulled it off. Neither your lot nor Voldemort's noticed me, and, with my extensive knowledge of defensive techniques against both Dark and Light magic, I could have sat around calmly sipping tea while your groups' raids and counter-raids raged around me. (I never did, but only because I didn't want to draw attention.) And so I stayed free of the war – you pompous prig, I can see you winding up for one of your speeches about the choice between what is right and what is easy. Do not EVER preach to me, Albus. I knew you before your charming mask was half so well-established, and I know that you always choose what is easy. I had no responsibilities when I chose to stand by and observe; what of you, when –

But I digress. I survived the war, yes; I continued my stance of studied neutrality, devoting myself to monitoring magical abnormalities in England. Not for any altruistic purpose, you understand, but so that I would always be forewarned of Wizarding England's next calamity and be therefore forearmed. Selfish? Oh, indeed, selfish. But also selfless, compared to many of your followers – beyond the Veil, I outgrew the need for a protector to do all the thinking for me and keep me safe from all the things that made noise in the night. My misfortunes are solely my own.

And now for the part that DIRECTLY CONCERNS YOU, YOU VILE BLIGHT UPON ALL THE WIZARDING WORLD.

Ah, yes. Have you stopped skimming now, Albus?

You see, my monitoring picked up a heavily-bespelled house in the most Muggley of Muggle neighborhoods. While certain Wizarding families do retain homes in predominantly Muggle areas, and it is a common practice to stuff safehouses in the middle of nowhere, its sudden appearance on the magical landscape perturbed me, and I resolved to undertake a light investigation of it at my earliest convenience.

Very funny about those secrecy wards, Albus. Ha-ha. I suppose that's why no one else really put much effort into following up that lead. What did you do to dump that much power into the wards? Sacrifice three virgins at midnight on Walpurgis?

Unfortunately for you, I'm not right in the head. And do you know what it does to me when my mind keeps pulling away from something, no matter how many times I go past it on my to-do list? It disturbs me. And I'm a disturbed witch to begin with.

So I tracked down your little hideaway, even if it took me three times as long as I should have because I kept taking the wrong turns and stopping to stare at butterflies. Very funny, Albus. But I don't give up when my will's locked upon something. I'd walk through Hell and not flinch. All the avoidance spells in the world couldn't deter me.

And that was how I wound up standing before Number Four Privet Drive on the morning of July 30th, 1997. I easily undermined all your spells – the ones for secrecy, the ones for repulsion of external observers, the ones for your own observation, the ones for Merlin-knows-what – and set off not a single one of your alarms.

Of course, I could never have done that without the assistance of the blood wards. Oh, is that old heart of yours thumping harder, Albus? But you should have known the extent of a mother's love for her child. You should have known that the protection upon the boy sensed the difference between defensive concealment and covert abuse. Magic is not your mindless tool. It has a will of its own. But you never could understand that.

They leapt to my aid, and together we tore apart what you'd done. And from there, it was easy to set a simple monitoring-spell of my own upon the one magical child in the house – the boy around whom all the other spells had wrapped – and wait to discover the secrets of this strangely-warded home.

It didn't take me long to glean how the Muggles within the house treated the boy, and, when I barged in with wand in hand, exactly what they thought of all my freakish kind.

Picture the scene, Albus – if you're capable of visualizing anything other than your newest horrid outfit. An unkempt, malnourished child in oversized, overused clothing, curled up in a ball as a horse-faced harridan screamed and struck at him with the kitchen utensil she had closest to hand. An overfed, maroon-faced thug pounding on a table and bellowing that they'd had enough of his freakish antics. The horse-faced harridan whirling on the intruder and, when she saw the wand in my hand, beginning to screech about how it was none of my business how good, normal people treated freaks, how the boy deserved it for imposing upon them anyway, and how we were all disgusting, unnatural things who ought to have it beaten out of us…

I apologize to the Aurors, whom I know to be spending a great deal of their time investigating the case, but what happened next unfortunately isn't very clear in my memory. I seized the boy at some point. I blew up the house at some point. Those two events occurred in that order. I don't know anything more than that.

I am sorry for the Muggle boy who was sleeping in upstairs at the time. I didn't realize he was there. However, from the young wizard's testimony, he had been raised as an active participant in the abuse – probably, being a blood relative of the boy, to circumvent the protection offered by the blood wars – and took great pride in making the freak's life as miserable as possible. I've no sympathy for Muggles that torture witches and wizards, whatever their age. If I am monstrous for that, I'll gladly answer to "monster".

And he must have died instantly, painlessly, and in his sleep besides. A far kinder fate than the one his cousin might have soon suffered.

Yes, Albus.

About that.

Why did you leave a Wizarding child alone with brutal and magic-hating Muggles?

From the boy's testimony, the only reason the corpulent thug hadn't beaten him to a pulp was that all his blows glanced right off. (Blood wards are a wondrous and merciful thing.) But the harridan was free to assault him. And the Muggle child – that one and his friends made a game of beating the boy at every opportunity. Moreover, whatever the limitations upon their ability to do physical harm, the blood wards could do nothing to prevent their screaming abuse at all hours of the day and night, and a six-year-old child had no way to defend himself. Indeed, by the time I arrived at that accursed doorstep, he half-believed it.

You observed. You knew all of this.

You stood by… why?

A more ignorant witch might conclude you wanted to break the boy's will and make him your grateful tool. But my knowledge of magic goes deep into realms no witch or wizard ought ever to have known, and so does yours.

You meant to destroy his mind. To make him into a weapon. To turn him into something that could do nothing BUT be utterly, helplessly reliant upon you, and would not be missed when you put it down after you were done with it.

Of course, if he somehow did not break under the abuse, he would still be a pleasantly malleable tool. But that wasn't the one outcome everything about that environment was designed to create.

The boy is safe, Albus. Safer than you can imagine. I care not for your wars. I work daily to unwind the Horcrux from his head and from his mind, and I'll send it on a platter to actual Light wizards for disposal once I succeed. With its extraction will cease any trace of the boy's involvement with Lord Voldemort or de facto Lord Dumbledore. Transfiguration and blood rituals will do much to sever any link between this child and Harry Potter. The boy has no objection whatsoever to the idea – he wants nothing less than to be the Wizarding World's pet freak.

The weapon you desired will never be created. The boy will live well and be happy, caring nothing for Voldemort's mad dreams of conquest or your mad dreams of control. England can shift for itself – if it must cling to one Lord or another and never stand on its own two feet, it can burn. I care for only one man in England, and I trust him to be able to adapt to anything. Your brother is ten times the man you are, Albus, and never forget it.

As for me, I'm moving out of England and taking the boy with me. I'll have to reestablish my monitoring system in a fresh country, but I have all the time in the world. I'm an ordinary witch with an ordinary life (and now an ordinary stepson), after all – who's going to disturb me?

Of course, Albus, you can try to pursue me. Go right ahead! No, by all means, do so! I look forward to it. That Hallow of yours gives you the supremacy in any wand-fight, but I didn't need to use my wand to reduce the Muggles' house to smithereens. And you're not as young as you once were, Albus, no matter how spry you remain. I expect your ability to throw yourself behind couches and dodge around corners has decreased quite a bit since you were seventeen. You never could face me in one of my rages, and you know it.

And I am quite enraged, O greatest wizard of our times. Do you even realize how many drafts of this letter I've had to attempt? The first five times, the page spontaneously combusted. The sixth time, the desk did.

But, if you're so convinced of your own brilliance and invincibility, track me down and try to take back the boy for whom you intended the worst of all living hells. I'll be quite happy to send you on your next great adventure.

Interesting euphemism for Cocytus.

Sincerely,  
(the former) Ariana Dumbledore


	3. Postscript

P.S.

Oh, speaking of secrecy? By the time you read this letter, certain newspapers' presses should be printing the first copies of a Special Investigative Report. You'll love it – it's about you. I know you can't resist the sight of your own face in print.

Of course, you might not like little details it reveals about you. Such as your taste for nubile underage Dark-Lords-to-be. (That for all your insinuations about Aberforth, you slandering scum.) Or your generous donations of schemes, strategies, and slogans to said ascendant Dark Lord. Or, in general, the remarkable speed with which you revealed your true colors when given the opportunity, after years of impersonating the perfectly moral young suck-up… No, I don't think that will go over very well with your Muggle-loving Light devotees, will it? And I don't foresee any sudden surge of popularity with the Dark, either. They hated you enough when they thought you were a Light idealist who didn't know any better. What do you think they'll think of you now that they know you're a two-faced traitor?

Oh well. At least I know you won't mind the extensive evidence that you abandoned your family at every opportunity to go chasing after every distraction that presented itself while your supposedly-shiftless brother devoted himself to caring for your deathly-ill, unstable, extremely dangerous sister. Or that you repeated the pattern every time you had any scrap of responsibility, leading to the deaths of several students under suspicious circumstances during your tenure as Headmaster of Hogwarts, the mysterious pattern of every single Defense teacher you've appointed losing their reputation, sanity, or life before the year was out, and a remarkable tendency on the part of your known favorites to die spectacularly heroic and stupid deaths under your loving guidance. Oh yes, you won't mind at all – because you've always been completely shameless about it.

I hope you appreciate it, Albus. After discovering what you'd done to the boy, I put a great deal of thought into what would harm you the most. And then I realized.

Indeed, death isn't the worst thing you can do to a man. Perfect Albus, the prodigy, the would-be Lord, the great magus, the brilliant, the beloved – he always loved one thing more dearly than life, didn't he? From the time he was a snotty prat yelling at me not to get my greasy fingerprints on his shiny trophies.

His appearance. His flawless appearance. And, as an extension of that, his sainted reputation.

Enjoy your ruin, Albus. You've earned it.


End file.
